Norman Maclean Quotes

One and all have to face reality now.

Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

That's reality, it's accessibility. People are used to seeing me like that for the last year, I think, ... To avoid it is avoidance. We're not going to avoid things.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth

Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.

You can't conquer reality by running away from it.

Fear is a natural reaction of moving closer to the truth. If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

I believe in facing reality. But only because I don't like turning my back on it.

Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.

The truth - you've got to deal with it or it will kill you bit by bit.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

People have to be realistic, or the dream just drags on.

Just when the truth about life sinks in, His truth starts to surface. He takes us by the hand and dares us not to sweep the facts under the rug but to confront them with him at our side.

nothing good ever comes out of denying the truth about our situation.

People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.

Truth, however bitter, can be accepted, and woven into a design for living.

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.

There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.

Recognize reality even when you don't like it-especially when you don't like it.

I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it.

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.